SEPT. 11: Young adults quietly prepare for struggle

After years of peace and affluence, today's young adults face the fears and uncertainties of war.

Shortly after the Sept. 11 attack, a group of senior citizens who were in college when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor offered comforting advice to a class of college freshman facing a similar struggle.

"Everyone was asking, 'What should we do? What did you do?' " said Sarah Aultman, 18, who was in Carol Ann Vaughn's cultural perspectives class at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala., that day.

"They said, 'We just waited.'

"The most helpful thing I got from them was not to worry about doing something right now, but when they give us something to do - when the president sends out a call - to be ready to act."

Young adults today know little of war. They may remember Desert Storm from 1991 vaguely or not at all. But, suddenly, they are facing one of America's most feared attacks and most daunting tasks - to defeat an intangible enemy who has attacked our country from within. And it's mostly young people who will likely be fighting this battle.

Young adults say they are confused, some are afraid, all are wondering how recent events will affect their lives. But they are patient.

Scott Rowe, a Reserve Officers' Training Corps cadet and a junior at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), said the attacks and America's response seems to have brought out the best in many young people. He said fellow cadets are taking training more seriously and civilian peers say they want to help.

"Everyone thought that today's kids weren't as responsible as they were," he said. "This is real. We have to take it seriously and be ready to act."

Candice Cagle, 19, a sophomore at the University of Alabama, said young people are taking it seriously with a necessary calm.

"I think it's our generation that is handling it the best," Cagle said. "I think there's a lot of older people packing up their stuff just like for Y2K.

"I think we are stepping up. People are going out and joining the military, and they're volunteering more. But we're not panicking."

Many young adults say that's because they have other things to think about - school, work, young families, paying the rent.

It could be called self-absorption, one characteristic that has been used to label today's young generation.

However, Nicole Siegfried, assistant professor of psychology at Samford, said setting aside world burdens to think about daily tasks is part of healing. She said the fact that young people are thinking more about school and work shows that they are bouncing back.

"I think a lot of college kids and high school kids don't get the credit they deserve. They've had to deal with a lot more than some of the generations before," she said, mentioning school violence and crime rates that have risen in the last 20 years. "Our young people have been there, done that. They've dealt with fears for their safety."

Most young adults agreed that they have bounced back. No one interviewed expressed a constant fear or anxiety; none had stocked up on antibiotics or built a bomb shelter.

Still, the fears were there, both personal and universal.

"With the whole heightened alert, and people coming on the news and saying it's going to happen in the next few days - that scares me," said Bryony Cole, 22, a first-year graduate student at the University of Alabama. "I don't know how to protect myself against terrorism or biological warfare."

Annusha Srivastava, 19, a sophomore at UAB, said she worries because she's Indian and many of her friends are "brown." She said she has been attacked verbally and one friend dropped out of school because her parents feared for her safety.

Chris Ebner, 24, a first-year graduate student at UAB, said he worries about his family. He has two children, age 2 and 5, who don't understand what's going on, and a wife who fears a more massive biological attack on the United States.

But aside from fears, young adults expressed a quiet patriotism and a willingness to watch and wait.

"I think they've dealt with it pretty well so far," said Shana Harris, 18, a freshman at UAB. "They're not not thinking before they do stuff. I think we have to be patient and careful."

Young adults in the military are glad to see that response from people of their own generation.

Michael Ballard, an ROTC cadet and a junior at UA, said in the past American people have reacted to acts of war with immediate patriotism that dwindles quickly and leaves the military without support.

He said he hopes young adults will lead a more reserved and lasting wave of patriotism.

Grad students Ebner and Cole said they both have new outlooks. Both say they're more concerned with staying close to friends and family and taking school more seriously. They're studying occupational therapy and may end up treating veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Others said they are learning to be more open about differences and have a stronger desire for unity.

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